The standard textbook for Fundamentals of General Chemistry I at the University of Connecticut has a list price of $303. For students who use the version professor Edward Neth is preparing for the fall semester, the cost will be zero. An early adopter of open source textbooks, Neth said he turned to the new technology out of frustration with spiraling prices of commercial textbooks.

Phi Beta Iota: We now see that Thompson Reuters is six times larger than Elsevier, and the two together are over-shadowed by a massive textbook industry, but all of them appear oblivious the the radical changes occuring in the information world, including the world of tax and financial reporting. They all seem complacent in staying with the 1% of the knowledge that is published and protected, when there is another 99% of knowledge that is if anything far more valuable. Below is one chart from Robert Steele — these people are the green circle in the middle on the left — they are ignoring everything else, which is a shame, because everything else is where 21st Century sustainable profit is to be found.